Saturday, October 31, 2009

I promise this is the last Jason Webley video I'll post here. Here's him covering Neutral Milk Hotel during a show at Bottom of the Hill. I was there in person, but the video was done by someone much closer to the front.

MSNBC.com has this story about how Linda Vista Elementary School accidentally put a phone-sex number on their Jog-a-thon shirts.

The school was promoting a jog-a-thon fundraiser and printed shirts displaying a lion, their school mascot. The caption below featured the tag line "How's my running? Call 1-800 Eat Dust."

It was supposed to be a snarky, fun slogan. Until a curious parent called the number and discovered it connected to a she-male sex chat line. Oops.

"It was an innocent mistake. Parents have been very understanding," Rosemary Gladden, public information officer for Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, told the Orange County Register.

The schools PTA, who printed the shirts, is not the first group to make the "typographical error" according to the Associated Press. The two word 800 number shows up online as part of a popular running slogan sold on T-shirts and merchandise.

This reminds me of the year my El Dorado High School yearbook's title was misspelled to read "The Golden Anus" instead of "The Golden Year".

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

As part of a KFC promotional stunt, an actor by the name of Robert Thompson portraying the famous Colonel Sanders (who passed away in 1980) was able to sneak past UN security guards and even meet Ali Treki, the new president of the UN General Assembly, under the guise of representing the 'Grilled Nation'.

Pro-life activist Randal Terry is encouraging conservatives to print out effigies of Senators Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and set them aflame for a new video contest. If you want to take place, there's a video with detailed instructions here. First place gets an all-expenses paid trip to DC for the anniversary of Roe V Wade. I just like the crazy video above, myself.

For those who don't like to go that long without hearing a new and absurd Supreme Court ruling, the Minnesota Supreme Court has found in a split-decision that you can be charged with a 1st degree felony for possession of over 25 grams of bong water. The ruling comes after a woman was found with 37 grams (less than three tablespoons) of bong water that tested positive for methamphetamine.

As a result of the testimony of narcotics officer Rauenhorst (who was neither present for nor involved with the search in question) to the effect that drug-users sometimes save bong-water “for future use . . . either drinking it or shooting it in the veins” the woman will now more than likely go to prison for more than 7 years, even though absolutely no evidence was presented that the defendant intended to do such a disgusting thing.

You can almost hear the veins popping in the dissenting judges opinion:

The majority‟s decision to permit bong water to be used to support a first-degree felony controlled-substance charge runs counter to the legislative structure of our drug laws, does not make common sense, and borders on the absurd....But if we treat the bong water as paraphernalia, the same defendant would receive a fine of no more than $300 dollars and a petty misdemeanor conviction that would not go on his or her criminal record. The disparity in the severity of the sentence between these two possible charges is enormous. This enormous disparity in sentencing severity creates ambiguity as to how the legislature intended the drug statutes to apply to the facts of this case....I conclude that it is also unreasonable to interpret our legislature‟s laws as punishing Peck‟s possession of two and one-half tablespoons of bong water as a more serious crime than the possession of 24 grams of cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine. Bong water is normally not consumed, and Peck would likely have disposed of it had the police not seized it.

I'm further enraged by the courts ruling that bong water counts as a drug mixture, defining “mixture” as “a preparation, compound, mixture, or substance containing a controlled substance, regardless of purity," essentially meaning trace amounts of any drug can now be classified as full-scale possession.

Of course everyone's just going to make bad jokes about how gross bong-water tastes instead of actually standing up to this bullshit.

Totally badass proof of concept video for a D&D application of the Microsoft Surface. From Penny-Arcade.com:

-A while ago we went out to speak at the ETC in Pittsburgh. After our talk we got to walk around the campus and talk to all the different teams. You can go back and read Tycho's post about our trip. One of the groups we saw was working on developing applications for the Microsoft Surface. The stuff they were doing was for some kind of defense contractor though and so it was all essentially top secret. They did have a Surface in their room though and I actually sat down and played with it for a bit. After I was done doodling I started sketching out a game grid and we all got to talking about how you might be able to use this tech to play D&D. I drew out some rough ideas and Tycho and I gave them a wish list of things we'd want to see it do. Stuff like selecting spells from a menu around your figure and animates effects for attacks and auras.

After we got home we received a mail from them saying they liked the idea so much they wanted to make it their next project. That was months ago and they've just now released their first proof of concept video. Obviously it's still super early but in my opinion it's got a ton of potential.

Retailers Target, Toys R Us and Meijer have removed a Halloween costume depicting an 'Illegal Alien' after complaints from several organizations, though at this moment Amazon and Walgreens continue to stock theirs. The product description reads:

He didn’t just cross a border, he crossed a galaxy! He’s got his green card, but it’s from another planet! Sure to get some laughs, the Illegal Alien Adult Costume includes an orange prison-style jumpsuit with “Illegal Alien” printed on the front, an alien mask and a “green card.”

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles wrote a letter to retailers asking them to stop selling the item. Executive director Angelica Salas called it “distasteful, mean-spirited, and ignorant of social stigmas and current debate on immigration reform.”

Halloween Express, however, is selling a separate mask that would probably go even better with whatever offensive costume you're trying to put together.

Target claims the costume wasn't even supposed to be on their site or catalogue, and were quick to apologize.

Of course, as with every other costume, there is a 'Sexy' alternative for women which comes with a metallic dress, festive sombrero, alien sunglasses and handcuffs (?). So far, there seems to be absolutely no controversy over this one.

Quite predictably, Fox News sees nothing wrong with the costume - they are, after all, the chief users of the illegal alien pejorative. Watch it here.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Scientists rigged up virtual reality for a mouse, and did the only logical thing - played a game of Quake.

Tank's team designed an apparatus in which a mouse, its head firmly held in a metal helmet, walks on the surface of a styrofoam ball. The ball is kept aloft by a jet of air, so that it functions like a multidirectional treadmill. Around it are sensors taken from optical computer mice, which read the ball's movement as the mouse runs.

Those readings were the input for the researchers' virtual reality software -- a modified version of the open source Quake 2 videogame engine, tweaked to project an image on a screen surrounding the mouse. Tank called it "a mini-IMAX theater." Mice in the study ran through a virtual maze designed in the open source Quake game editor, but rather than earning points or power-ups, they were rewarded with sips of water from a head-side nozzle.

Into the hippocampus of each mouse the researchers inserted a glass capillary just one micron wide at its tip and filled with salt water. Known as a whole-cell patch recorder, it detects electrical currents as they pulse through individual cells.

"It is difficult to overstate the importance of understanding how the dynamics of electrical activity within single neurons is related to firing patterns among collections of neurons that accompany the performance of complex tasks," wrote Douglas Nitz, a University of California at San Diego cognitive scientist, in a commentary accompanying the findings.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Media Matters for America has a collection of some of Glenn Beck's funnier conspiracy charts. I especially like the Che-Guevara-ACORN-Mumia-Al-Jabar connection, though there's also the rising tide of OLIGARHY.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Boston.com's BigPicture feature has a great series of pictures from this years Chinese National Day Parade, which celebrated 60 years of the People's Republic of China.

Dancers from the National Ballet of China performs the "Red Detachment of Women" ballet at the Tanggu Great Theater, part of the celebration of China's 60th anniversary, in Tianjin, September 26, 2009. (REUTERS/Jason Lee) #

My old roommates Jacob and Lee have set up their new site, Heck Yes Burger Time, wherein they review a different burger every day for a month. Check out both the East Bay and San Francisco versions, which have reviews in both text and audio for massive LOLs.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

A musical tribute to two great men of science. Carl Sagan and his cosmologist companion Stephen Hawking present: A Glorious Dawn - Cosmos remixed. Almost all samples and footage taken from Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Stephen Hawking's Universe series.